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July 2016

Navigate backup, disaster recovery and archive convergence

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There is now considerable overlap in storage among data backup, disaster recovery and archive. This e-book discusses the advantages and issues that come from a convergence of data backup, disaster recovery and archiving. Organizations should consider convergence as a potential financial and storage space benefit.

The first chapter of this e-book provides tools for how to make backup and primary storage convergence work for your organization. These tools include continuous data protection, also known as continuous backup. CDP's biggest advantage is that it keeps a record of every transaction in the enterprise.

As another example of the ongoing merger of data backup, disaster recovery and archive, while backup and disaster recovery largely used to be considered separate functions, they are converging. The second chapter of this e-book explains how and why this is occurring, and what it could mean for you. Indeed, much of this backup-disaster recovery convergence is the result of snapshot, replication and virtualization making it possible for disaster recovery without data restoration.

Yet another example of convergence is occurring with backup and archiving, thanks to software and hardware advancements. The third chapter of this e-book explains the benefits and challenges of converging the two disciplines. You'll learn how much data you should retain and for how long you need to keep it, as well as the products that make it all possible.

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For data storage shops, convergence should actually represent an ongoing design principle, and its influence on emerging and evolving technologies is increasing. Moreover, because convergence typically promises a favorable financial impact, it should be a primary consideration in any strategic technology decision.

In the data center, convergence in various domains can help rein in the number of installed devices while reducing the number of separate pieces that must be touched every time an IT service is built or modified.

Continuous data protection (CDP) is an example of the convergence of backup and primary storage. Also called continuous backup, CDP is a storage system in which all the data in an enterprise is backed up whenever any change is made. In effect, CDP technology creates an electronic journal of complete storage snapshots, one storage snapshot for every instant in time that data modification occurs. A major advantage of CDP technology is the fact that it preserves a record of every transaction that takes place in the enterprise.

With this e-book chapter, learn about the ways that backup and primary storage are converging (e.g., CDP technology), which kinds of organizations best benefit from convergence, and some goals it can help achieve.

Data protection has evolved at such a rapid pace over the last few years that today's backup and disaster recovery systems barely resemble those from a decade ago. One of the ways this evolution has occurred is through the convergence of backup and disaster recovery and the emergence of instant recovery.

In the past, data backup and DR were primarily treated separately. Backup was about making a recoverable copy of data or entire servers, while DR was concerned with continuity of business -- the idea of moving workloads to new hardware and remote locations in the event of a major disaster.

A great deal of the convergence can be attributed to server virtualization. Most organizations are heavily virtualized, and server virtualization provides a degree of flexibility that simply was not possible until somewhat recently. Not only does the hypervisor deliver new capabilities, but many backup vendors have design features that exploit the portability of virtual machines.

The convergence of backup and disaster recovery technologies, and the rise of instant recovery, has occurred largely because snapshot, replication and virtualization have made it possible to recover from a disaster without the need for a traditional data restoration. The methods involved in this convergence seek to minimize storage cost, while also allowing for instant recovery.

In this e-book chapter, explore these methods and how the convergence of backup and disaster recovery and emergence of instant recovery could apply to your organization.

The purposes of data backup and archiving are quite different, as are the demands each technology places on the storage system. But most data centers, especially those in small to medium-sized organizations, don’t have formal archiving strategies, and given the capabilities of modern backup software and hardware, they may not need one.

The primary responsibility of backup is to restore the latest copy of data back to production storage as quickly as possible. The primary responsibility of an archive is to store data for a long period of time.

Today, there is an authentic convergence of backups and archives -- people are seeing them as complementary. Not only are backups and archives planned as parts of a single data protection strategy, but both sets of data are increasingly stored within the same protection-storage container and even sometimes managed by one team.

The convergence of backups and archives comes with benefits -- reduction in capital and operational costs as well as simplification of IT processes -- but also challenges, such as making sure that the software can perform the task, and readability of the backup and the archive.

The decision to merge data backups and archives often depends on the size of the archive. How much data needs to be retained and for how long? In this E-Book chapter, find out if the convergence of backups and archives will work for you, and learn about products that are facilitating this union.